Engine Grease and Figs
by theprinceofparties
Summary: Drabbles, one shots, mostly drabbles… I have nothing to say that will make this sound particularly special, other than that I can speak in a Scottish accent. Yoo  might liek it if yoo rrread it! Prompt pending. Slooowwwly.
1. Doors Unlocked and Open

**iPod shuffle game c: Except I'm a huge cheater because I take extra time to finish and I skip songs that I find virtually impossible. REGARDLESS, here are some drabbles:**

Doors Unlocked and Open

(Death Cab for Cutie)

Alek raised a perpetually grimy fist to rap once on Dylan's door, only to notice that it already stood slightly ajar. Forgoing all rules of etiquette once embedded into his carefully sculpted princely mind and choosing instead to do as the airmen do, he took this as an invitation and swung the feather-light wooden slab open with gusto and a boisterous, "Morning, Dylan! How about breakf—"

A rather feminine squeak stopped him short. Dylan was in the middle of awkwardly winding some sort of bandage around his upper chest, and had paused, elbows splayed, to shoot Alek a look somewhere between panic and fury.

"Did you hurt yourself?" Alek asked, genuinely concerned. "You never mentioned—"

"Aye! A few ribs! Now _get the blazes out!_"

"Are you sure—"

"Out!"

And so Alek backed out into the corridor, closing the door gently in front of him. How insensitive of him, to have forgotten Dylan's penchant for privacy.

Back inside Deryn hurriedly finished dressing, at the same time relieved and amazed that Alek could still be so painfully oblivious.

"I'd swear he's never seen a naked lass before," she muttered.

.

Hands Up

(Hedley)

Said the shopkeeper. Chagrinned, Alek slowly pivoted and raised his hands. Two handfuls of unpaid-for saltwater taffy and various other sweets were displayed for all the curious shoppers to see. A few loose pieces slid down his sleeves and hit the floorboards like sugary hailstones. He couldn't see, but he was positive outside Deryn was laughing.

Actually, he could kind of hear her. She was slapping her knees too.

"Aren't you a little old to be shoplifting _sweets_, lad?" the mustachioed man inquired with a half-disbelieving, half-pitying expression. Alek shrugged as best as he could with his hands still up. One tubby boy in the peanut gallery was snickering.

"Just put 'em down on the counter," the shopkeep said with a sigh. Alek did as told, cheeks burning. He could definitely hear Deryn's guffaws now. "You're a right disgrace to the poor lass out there. She can keep hers, only because I pity her wasting a pretty face like that on useless ninny like you."

Alek felt a bit of a smile tugging at his cheek. "I'll make sure to pass the message along."

.

Waiting…

(City & Colour)

DarkWarmthBreath FingersHandsHair

SoapSweat GreaseMetalFigsSkin

EyesLipsGlimmerFlushPucker

BreatheSighClutchMumble

HeartLungs

Hesitate

"Alek, I'm waiting…"

LeanPullPress"I—"Kiss.

.

Automatic Stop

(The Strokes)

(A/N: I completely forgot cars would never exist. What a blunder.)

"Which one?"

"Right! No, left!"

Alek slammed on the right and left pedals, causing the automobile to shoot forward and jerk to a whiplashing halt respectively. Deryn swore as she ricocheted back into her seat.

"Let _me_ try again."

Alek loosened his grip on the wheel and inhaled. "I've piloted a Stormwalker, a goddess, a djinn, and a _whale_—"

"You did _not _pilot the barking _Leviathan!_"

"I think I can handle a simple _car!_"

Deryn snorted, blowing displaced hair from her face. "I'll believe it when I see it."

.

The Creep

(Lonely Island feat. Nicki Minaj, John Waters)

Deryn casually sipped her tea, trying her hardest to ignore the fixated man across the way. What he was fixated on, she _hoped_ was out the window just to her right, but she'd stolen a glance herself and the view wasn't particularly exciting. Not _that_ exciting, anyway. Not enough to have an old man drooling.

Alek finally noticed that he did not have her full attention and paused in his retelling of some gallant, Clanker adventure. "Creep," Bovril muttered, following her line of sight.

Alek glanced sideways quickly enough to catch the old man's eyes, who promptly grinned sheepishly and looked down, anorexic mustache pulling up like a second smile.

"Ugh," Deryn muttered into her tea. Before Alek could continue, she caught the man at it again and rose swiftly from her seat.

"Deryn—"

"I'm just going to tell him off for staring. Last I heard it was sodding rude." She strode across the café to the old man's table, bent down, and said something in a low, careful tone. Alek strained to hear, but picked up nothing. Finally, the man burst into laughter.

Deryn stiffened in surprise, then, before Alek could get up and find out what had happened, picked up the man's cup and threw the now-lukewarm contents at his face. She sailed back over, grabbed her husband by the arm, and hauled him out the door. Alek had just enough time to toss a few pounds onto the table. "Rude!" Bovril protested.

"What was that all about?" Alek asked once they were out the door. "Did he not apologize?"

"Oh, he apologized," Deryn muttered. "For ogling _you_."

.

Call Me Irresponsible

(Michael Bublé)

"_Mr._ Sharp!" Bovril greeted the middy from atop Alek's shoulder. The two met in the corridor, pausing to exchange pleasantries.

"The weather's rather fine today."

"Aye, it is. Keeping busy?"

Alek smirked. "Oh, you know, I'll find bits and pieces of free time, but other than that…"

"Bits and pieces, is it?" Deryn raised her eyebrow. "I happen to be in the middle of a bit myself. Perhaps you'd care to join me?"

"Well, as long as we're at our cabins," said Alek, as though he was concerned with inconveniencing either himself or the object of his affections.

"Aye, mine's directly behind you, as it happens," said Deryn, as though this happy coincidence had not been meticulously plotted.

"Well, fancy that!" said Alek, as though he were the kind of man who regularly said 'fancy that'.

"Irresponsible," said Bovril.


	2. Five Ways for Boobs to Happen

**It's not an unpopular speculation that Alek might find Deryn out via her anatomical bits and pieces, which seems unlikely, but REGARDLESS, here are**

**Five Ways for Boobs to Happen**

**Rated C for Crack**

1) Convenient Injury

"God's wounds! I mean, Dylan's wounds! Dylan, you're hurt!"

"Naw, it's just a scratch."

"Dylan, there's a _fork_ sticking out of your chest."

"Alright, which one of you blighters threw that?"

"Dyl—"

"Mr. Newkirk, was that you, you ridiculous ninny?"

"Haha, you got me, Mr. Sharp!"

"Dylan, I really think—"

"Mr. Sharp! If you could kindly displace yourself from in front of our dartboard."

"Up yours, Mr. McMillian!"

"Oh, you joker!"

"Seriously, Dylan—"

"Alek, you're in the way. Why don't we…—"

"Dylan? Dylan! God's wounds, he's fainted! I'll have to bring him to a secluded area with no other witnesses in order to strip him down and remove the utensil!"

.

2) Convenient Lack of Manners

Alek always knocked. He came from a long line of knockers. It was the polite, proper thing to do, before crossing _any _threshold! Also, he liked the sound his knuckles made on the Darwinists' fancy fabricated wood. Any excuse to knock was welcomed.

Except today he kept forgetting. He forgot when he went to visit Volger and ended up visiting him _and_ Dr. Barlow, much to their dismay ("Tell my husband and I'll set my bees on you," the doctor had hissed). He forgot when he went to say Good Morning to Klopp and ended up startling the man in the middle of a very delicate mustache-trimming session (he was looking a bit asymmetrical now). He forgot when he went to ask Newkirk about his thoughts on the weather that day, and ended up catching the boy in the middle of his daily Dylan-impersonation ("Ooh, look at _me_. _I'm_ Mr. Sharp and _I_ can draw pretty pictures and save a whole bunch of _lives_ and stuff. Look at my _swagger_, ooh, I'm pure dead _fancy_ I am.")

And then he forgot when he went to fetch Dylan and Bovril for breakfast. Alek barged right in at the exact moment after Dylan had shucked off his nightshirt and was searching the tiny room for a clean oxford. The middy had just spotted one hung on a hook on the door, and was reaching for it when the slab of wood swung wide open and smacked right into him. Alek was grinning, and then not so much.

"BLISTERS! _You hit me in the boob!_"

.

3) Via Possibly Mentally Retarded Loris

"What's gotten into it?"

"Beats me. It's just been mimicking hydrogen sniffer sounds and glow worm noises all morning."

"Glow worm—?"

"Ack! Bovril! What in blazes are you trying to do?"

"Cold."

"_Get out of my shirt, you useless sodding piece of—_"

"I'll get it out, Dylan!"

"No! It's fine! I don't think—"

"WITH MY BARE HANDS!"

.

4) Fencing

"We've been over this, Dylan. Turn your chest _to the side_."

"I'm sorry, what? I was trying to do my barking job; you'll have to repeat that."

"Oh for crying out loud, do I have to show you?"

"Pardon?"

Alek sighs in exasperation, sets down his saber, and strides across the membrane. He twists Dylan like a mannequin—first his hips, then his midsection, then his torso. Alek gets right up behind him, reaches around to plant both hands squarely on the middy's pectorals, and rotates the body part into place.

"Say, Dylan…"

"… Aye?"

"Do you have something squishy in your pockets?"

.

5) _She's the Man _style

"I'm a girl."

Alek gives her a blank look, then bursts out laughing. It takes a few minutes for him to reign himself in. "You really had me going there for a second! Oh boy!" He wipes tears from his eyes. "Okay, Dylan, what's your actual secret?"

"That was it."

"_Psh_, I think I'd _know_ if you were actually a girl."

"Alek, I have a high voice."

"That doesn't prove anything! You could just be a homosexual, and I'd be totally fine with that if you were."

"Alek, I have breasts!"

"Maybe in your head, and there's nothing wrong—"

"No, they're quite literal. They're right in front of your face. See, my buttons are undone."

* * *

><p><strong>HAPPY CANANDA DAY!<strong>


	3. Wow Nice Baby

**I got the idea for this one from a review by The Useless Fact Wizard, who told me, "****According to Wikipedia, Dr. Barlow had a son who, conviniently, would have been concieved just around when the books begin... Now, does that sound a little...*suspicious* to you? Or is it just me?" Warning, it is high-grade crack.**

**Wow Nice Baby**

"Push, honeybee!"

"Pray tell, _what_ is it that you _think_ I am doing?"

"I just—I was just trying—"

"Oh, quit your insufferable babbling, Alan. And I'm sorry I snapped at you. I'm under a bit of stress at the moment, in case it has escaped your notice."

"Er, that's quite alright, dear. It's perfectly natural—"

She lets loose a quick bark of a laugh. "Don't you think I don't know what is _perfectly natural_, Alan dear!" She laughs again, wiping the wet curls off her flushed face, and then sobers right back up. "Alas, all this idle chitchat is prolonging the birth of our child. Rather inefficient, really. Where was I? Ah yes, pushing."

After several more minutes of this ("I was really hoping we'd make better time this time around"), the doctor brandishes a pretty gnarly-looking, wrinkly, wet, pink thing. "Mrs. Barlow—"

"_Dr._ Barlow."

"Ah, of course, yes. And Mr. Barlow—"

"_Sir_ Barlow."

"Okay, whatever. Here is your new son." The flustered doctor hands the scrubbed-off infant to his mother, who smiles and pats her husband on the hand.

"Fine-looking boy," the doctor comments.

"You know…" Alan continues, "he doesn't look premature to me."

"Well he is," Nora says brusquely. "I've only been off the _Leviathan _for seven months."

The doctor carries on, "Quite the mustache he's got going."

Alan Barlow touches his own hairless lip speculatively. "It is, isn't it…" He looks at the heavily mustachioed newborn with narrowed eyes.

Nora notices. "I'm sure it's a recessive gene, dearest. Don't worry about it."

* * *

><p><strong>[edit] This is in no way intended to be at all accurate. At all. So any incongruencies with real timelines, events, blargh, etc. will just have to be ignored. My apologies to all of you history buffs, but I wrote this in five minutes. Thank you to the reviewer who pointed out my abhorrent disregard of reality though. I promise to make more of an effort in the future!<strong>


	4. Automatic Eyes

**More drabbles prompted via iTunes (I don't think I can rightfully claim I was playing the shuffle game), the majority of which are fluffy lovey dovey crapola. Try to enjoy.**

* * *

><p>Never Gonna Give You Up<p>

(you've just been Rick Roll'd)

"If I had to choose between you and flying, I'd choose you."

Alek's brows knit together in skepticism, his lips turning up in pink-cheeked flattery. "When you had to choose between being ostracized by the female half of your family, risking your only brother's career, risking your life, and _not _flying, you still chose flying."

"Aye." Deryn kissed his forehead. "But you make me feel like I'm flying half the time anyway, so it wouldn't be a huge bother."

.

Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?

(Fall Out Boy)

"I don't know who you are anymore."

"I'm the _same sodding person_," Deryn protests, though she can see he's already made up his mind. She tries not to let it kill her inside.

"You're not," he argues. "You're—I don't even _know_—hell, I doubt _you _even know, or you wouldn't have willingly put yourself in this situation!"

The little martyr in her gets her clart together and gets angry. She stands up, for once relishing how she towers over him. "I am exactly who I think I am."

Alek looks peeved. Tired and betrayed and peeved. "And who might that be?"

"The _dummkopf_ who had the idiocy to fall in love with you."

.

Steady as She Goes

(The Raconteurs)

It's not an empire. It's not a collective mass of millions of souls depending on him, fearing or loving or plotting to overthrow him.

It's not a palace. It's not even the nicest house in the vicinity.

It's not the chilly, ostentatious, rigid country he grew up in.

And this moment, right now, is not a nicety preformed at a social function out of obligation, for the sake of easing political tensions, of impressing those millions.

This is a family—_his _family. This is an evening spent with the two souls who mean the world to him, and certainly surpass the appeal of having an entire population depending on his decisions. Hell, they hardly depend on him _at all_.

This is his overgrown front garden, which he has allowed to fall to such a state in the interest of spending the sunny afternoons playing with his daughter, lying about with his wife. Talking and touching and yes, they play too.

This is Glasgow, and it's bright and friendly and the dialect still catches him up from time to time, but he is welcomed.

And this moment, right now, is an awkward, stooping dance he performs out of love, trying to keep up with the ball of energy skipping in circles around his feet while his wife sits in the grass and laughs. This hand he offers, when he catches his breath, is for her alone.

.

Monster Hospital

(Metric)

Alek is terrified. He won't admit it, but lying helpless in a Darwinist hospital is quite possibly the worst thing he can imagine happening to himself. Ever.

What's worse is that here, in the ER, the only separation from the melee—the absolute _chaos_ occurring around him—is a starchy curtain that doesn't even reach the floor. He can hear everything.

"_I'll be right back with the leeches—"_

"_I trust you're familiar with our use of mold for—"_

"—_new fab that crawls under—"_

"—_excellent for reducing swelling, without any of the harsh chemicals of—"_

"This is a nightmare," Alek groans, covering his ears. The tactic's not so effective that he can't hear his fiancée chuckling at him.

"A squick ironic, if you think about it, seeing as we're here because you tried to rescue a—_perfectly _capable and independent, by the way—_Darwinist fab_ from a tree."

Alek groans again, but it's not out of pain. "No one told me lorises could climb."

.

Somebody to Love

(Queen)

She cages him in with deft limbs, a sinuous form in the dark. He didn't realize how warm it could get between two people.

He drags her playfully down—he already has to look up at her when standing; why perpetuate the annoyance in his own bed? Her laugh is little more than breath. Oh, how he loves it.

She finds the best way to hold him and be held and ducks under arms and sheets to steal the breath from his lungs. He in turn steals swatches of soft skin and finds things he never expected to find here, in a middy's cabin on a Darwinist airship, in the middle of a war. Subtle dips and curves in her carefully hidden form, the sweet sighs she returns to him when he finds them in just the right way.

He finds in her eyes an inexplicable hunger. He finds in his fingers—just under his palm, which she has taken the liberty of placing for him—the mad heartbeat of somebody, the particular kind of somebody he wasn't expecting to find here.

.

Automatic Eyes

(The Academy Is…)

She deliberately bites her lips, turning them blood red against her teeth. Eyes heavy-lidded in the mirror, she runs the tip of her tongue around her mouth to add luster, then gives a practice pucker and snorts at the sham of a girl she is. He won't care. So he says.

She pinches her cheeks, though they're already flushed with anticipation.

She rummages around in her drawer of pilfered art supplies. Spartan though they are, there is one gem she'd found abandoned, forgotten, like a ring she once unearthed while digging in the dirt (only far more useful). She rubs her fingers on the broken stick of charcoal, blackening them, then gently slides her pale lashes through her fingertips. When she's done, her blue eyes look a million times brighter. Two swatches of sky framed in black metal portholes.

Her hair—her hair is hopeless.

Deryn Sharp straightens up and wipes the charcoal off on a rag, looks herself over in the mirror, and takes a deep breath. If he doesn't acknowledge all this barking effort, she'll gladly tear him a new one.


	5. Every Seven Seconds

**Despite the fact that I love Deryn to pieces, I keep seeming to accidentally write things in Alek's perspective. How queer. *strokes chin thoughtfully* I must actually love Deryn to pieces. I never really considered myself the lesbian type, but there you are. She's just that cool.**

* * *

><p><strong>Oh So That's What She Meant By Pear-shaped<strong>

He knew. And once he knew, he couldn't _un_-know. He couldn't look at her and see Dylan, see a boy, see his best friend.

He'd catch her eye in the corridor, snag a glimpse of her at work topside, exchange pleasantries and Good Mornings and Good Nights, but gone was the platonic friendship with a common soldier. Gone was the simplicity, the ease. Gone was Dylan Sharp.

Instead, he would lock eyes with her steady blue gaze, and he'd turn inexplicably to putty. They could chat as casually as they liked, but an undercurrent of something suppressed and strained was always present. Good Morning always sounded like I've Missed You. Good Night sounded like Too Soon. He slipped up. He couldn't control it. In the dim green of the corridor, everything winding down for the night around them, he stood a little too closely to her and he said Sweet Dreams.

She gawked. Then beamed.

Sweet Dreams to you too, your Highness.

The next night, he slipped up again.

Sweet Dreams, _Liebste._

Sweetheart. It was automatic. His father had said it all the time.

What's that mean?

Um, nothing…

She grinned devilishly. So if I prance around calling all your Clanker friends _Liebste_, what kind of reaction can I expect?

Don't—

What's it mean?

He hesitated. He told her. She smiled a beautiful, heart-stopping smile. How had none of the other men noticed? How were Alek's knees the only ones threatening to buckle? How was his the only heart skipping beats?

How had this happened?

His bemused train of thought was swiftly derailed as she enveloped him into her arms, his chin just clearing her shoulder. He could worry about it later.

.

**What That Previous Drabble was Actually Supposed to Turn Into Before I Took Off On Some Fluffy Tangent Because in Actuality it Was Intended to Become Quite Racy**

**(consider this a fanfic of a fanfic of a fan-comic parodying a comic parodying fanfiction! If you've read **_**Goggles**_** by Julia456 you'll be quite in the loop)**

He can't look at her in quite the same way. He can try, goddamnit, but it is utterly futile.

He would catch a glimpse of her suited up, striding down the spine towards a waiting Huxley, and imagine the other soldiers sparing a passing Oh There Goes Mr. Sharp, Off On Another Totally Harmless Scouting Mission, when all he could think was How tight was her harness? How sure her steps? How warm her hands? Her feet? Her face? He would worry, and he would not stop worrying until she was safely on the whale's solid body once again.

Which was stupid, he knew. Deryn Sharp didn't need to be worried about.

So, with a little time, he learned not to fret. She was strong. She was sure. If anything _did_ happen, he had no doubt she would find her way safely down. Deryn was amazing.

And brilliant.

And dazzling.

And when he stopped worrying, he saw how much she grinned on the way up to the clouds. And how pleased she looked when she came back down, her cheeks and ears pink, her hair tousled, her goggles buried haphazardly in the blonde mess. She was a vision. It drove him insane.

All he could think about were the ways to prolong that shade of her cheeks (kiss her when—or _where_—she least expected it) or redden her ears (a gentle bite should do it) or tousle her hair as effectively as a pair of pilot goggles.

Horribly enough, these indecorous thoughts caught him up most when his attention was meant to be directed at other things. While he went mechanically about his engine duties, in his mind, he and her, tangled up, breathless, were crashing to the pillows and sheets. His fingers were knotted up in her windblown locks, her legs cinched around his hips. She would throw her head back, back arched, lips wide around a sound she couldn't make lest they be caught in an act he had no business thinking about in the middle of engine duty. Sometimes in their haste they would have forgotten to remove the goggles entirely.

When they were spent, she would rest that blonde head on his chest, and they would catch their breath and he'd run his fingers through her tousled hair again, smoothing it back out.

She talks idly with him as she pulls the goggles from her head, leaving her hair as is, and (disgracefully, inappropriately, horriblehorriblyhorribly) this is all he can think about.

.

**I'm neither a German speaker nor a fifteen year-old boy from the early 1900s, so correct me if you find anything to nitpick about in there.**


	6. Just a Little Off the Ends Thanks

**I feel like I need critique on this one. Also feel free to correct any historical errors I might've made!**

**Disclaimer!: All your cross-dressers and archdukes are belong to Scott.**

* * *

><p><strong>Just a Little Off the Ends, Thanks<strong>

An involuntary shiver passes through her as cold metal grazes her skin. Or perhaps the cause is the warm brush of his fingertips against her nape. She forces herself not to think about it. Unceremoniously, Alek flicks the pale clippings from Deryn's collar and carries on trimming her hair.

"_Newkirk_ did this, you said?"

"Aye. He's a dope."

"With no sense of what a straight line looks like, it would seem."

She grunts in agreement. "In retrospect, I probably should've asked you first. But you were busy."

Alek nods, now evening out the choppy mess at the base of her skull. "Just as long as you don't do it yourself. I wouldn't want you accidentally spearing yourself through the head."

She sticks her tongue out at him in the mirror, though feels a squick giddy at the prospect of him caring whether or not she gruesomely injures herself. He grins back, amused at having gotten a rise from her.

They talk easily as he evens out the rest of her sandy hair—nothing too heavy, just idle chatter. The rare change of pace is greatly welcomed. It's relaxing.

He asks her about her day, and she tells him of the message lizards she sent relentlessly after poor sodding Monkey Luddite Newkirk as payment for the botched haircut. Her boisterous laughter over the recap startles him, but he smiles, deciding he'll be more than happy to get used to it.

He tells her about a problem with the starboard engine that he'd managed to locate and repair all by himself, and, dull as it is, she listens anyway, content just to hear the sound of his voice.

His fingers graze her cheek as he checks to make sure the sides are of equal length. She feels the blood rush to her face and sends out a quick prayer that his convenient obliviousness kicks in. That's just what she needs—to be getting all moony on him while he's trying to make her look more masculine, and him noticing.

It takes a second for Deryn to realize he's paused. She meets his eyes in the mirror, but he appears to be far away in his thoughts.

"Are you finished?"

"Hm?" Alek snaps back at attention to actually look at her. "Sorry, I was just… wondering what you'd look like with longer hair." He fingers her trimmed locks pensively.

Her smile is wobbly and automatic, her cheeks freshly reddened. "Like a proper girl," she says as casually as she can while her insides are flopping irrationally about. Love is daft.

"Better you look like this then."

Her eyebrows pinch together. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"A proper girl would've stayed home," he says, teasing. The mockery extends to his own past foolishness. "Stayed in the kitchen and had babies, in no particular order. Only a _daft_ woman would jump into a war."

She plays along. "Then I guess it goes to show that daft women make the best fighters, aye?"

He makes what Deryn's come to recognize as the very closest thing a prince will get to a proper snort. "Women can't fight."

"Oh really?" He's taken their mock banter too far. Deryn pivots in her seat. "Have you never heard of the Amazon warriors? Or the Scots army that marched on Newcastle? Not all lads, y'know! And pray tell, your princeliness, who marched thirteen miles to Versailles, killed all the guards, carried their _severed heads_ on _spikes_ and forced that barmy Antoinette woman and her schlub husband all the way back to Paris!"

He blinks at her, realizing he's rubbed a sore spot. "You say that like you're proud," is what eventually comes out of his mouth. "And, I'm sorry, did you say that _barmy Antoinette woman?_ You do realize she was a Hapsburg, don't you?"

To his relief, she grins widely. "Aye. Like I said, _barmy_."

After a second he breaks into a warm smile and bends down (albeit not much) to level his face with hers. "Well, I suppose they would have to be a bit mad for one of them to fall for an improper disgrace like you." And before she can argue, he kisses the fight and annoyance and masculinity right out of her.


	7. War Movies pt1

**I've noticed a hefty overlap in the Leviathaneers here and on deviantArt, so I assume most of you know what nonsense I've been up to :) For those of you who don't, and like stupid crack comics, there's a link in my profile.**

**Conceived while watching **_**Passchendaele **_**in summer school. I have never been so bored by a movie with that much sex in it!**

**Disclaimer: Scott's chars :9 I'm just f*cking with them.**

* * *

><p>She had never intended to find herself on the ground, up to her waist in mud, swimming with rats, with dead bodies. But that was where you ended up when your airship was diced like a fancy piece of cheese. On the ground.<p>

Deryn Sharp reloaded her gun, trying not to fumble as the downpour slickened her hands and the black metal. A barrage of bullets skimmed overhead, one of them grazing and knocking from her soaked hair the helmet she'd been hastily issued not minutes ago, still nauseatingly warm from the previous owner's head.

She ducked, trying to remember to breathe, trying to quell the tightening in her throat. She wanted to curse and scream and be anywhere but this hell. She did not want to kill! She'd never desired such carnage, only freedom and flight. Forget that this was no place for a woman; this was no place for _anyone_.

"Sharp! Snap out of it!" the officer barked, firing off another round. It was down to him and her in this stinking hole in the ground, and the Germans were now approaching on foot to finish them off. They were literally like fish in a barrel.

Several men lay dead around her, some hardly older than she, some her fellow crew members from the magnificent ship the Germans had slaughtered.

They'd arranged their bizarre planes like pairs of strafing hawks, strips of sharpened steel strung taught between them, and using the Darwinists' own tactics had reduced the _Leviathan_ to a shredded mess. She could hardly even take satisfaction from the fact that the first two planes had met enough resistance to send them careening into each other, or gratitude in the fact that the merciless downpour had delayed and weakened the resulting explosions.

Down they'd gone, and Deryn had landed hard along with more of the luckier sods right on the fringes of battle. They were then scooped up by the approaching relief—those of them who could fight, anyway—and thrown into the trenches to help dispose of the remaining Huns. "It won't be long now!" they were assured. "An easy clean-up!"

Man up. Do your duty. She was almost sick of it.

"Sharp! Fire!"

But like a proper soldier, Deryn shut it all out and stuffed it all down, positioned her gun and fired.

.

The intention was to book it to the nearest village, and it may very well have been fulfilled if Bauer's broken leg had not proven to be quite a hindrance. Volger had snatched Alek by the wrist and dragged him into a slippery sprint, but the prince could not flee while Klopp and Hoffman struggled under the dead weight of their companion.

"Run, young master!" Bauer had hollered. They all had. "Run! We'll be fine!"

That was when the shells hit.

.

The Germans were on them like that. Bullets kicked up the water on Deryn's sides and she heard the metallic _clang_ of her floating helmet taking a hit. Shaking rain from her face, gritting her teeth, she hoisted herself up just slightly to get a better angle at her attackers—for all her height, she was still shorter than most of the soldiers down here. She pulled the trigger.

_BLAM!_ Through the head.

_BLAM!_ The chest.

_BLAM! BLAM!_ Lungs. Chest again. Two-legged creatures were reduced to their vital points in her mind. They fell.

_BLAM!_ Her shoulder. The impact knocked her off the lip of the trench.

_BLAM! BLAM! _Her stomach. Her ribs. Her thigh.

She went under, muddy water and silt flooding her riddled body in a sharp intake of breath. She came up spluttering, swearing, dizzy and alive with pain. Every cough wracked her frozen body and sprayed blood from white lips.

Deryn Sharp waded in agony to the trench's edge, expended the remaining bullets in her gun and fell face-first into the mud. She had had enough fighting.

.

Though an absolute bedlam, the flurry of red activity and the cacophony of groans and orders and assurances in the medical tent were almost peaceful compared to the trenches. Deryn's nurse was painted with blood and had no time to be particularly gentle. She had Deryn's shirt torn open before the wounded girl could fully come to.

'Careful tailoring' all for naught, the nurse quickly made sense of what she was seeing, gasped quietly, and reflexively yanked the blood-drenched cloth back over her patient's exposed body. She met Deryn's bleary eyes, which at the moment showed only the vaguest semblance that she had any idea what was going on around her. "Don't tell," Deryn breathed, barely audible in the din.

A groan to her left managed to catch her attention. It was a boy, his face and hair smeared and matted with congealing blood. His pant leg was partially sheared off to reveal an alarmingly large shard of shrapnel lodged in him, his piloting jacket was pared and drenched in blood and rain, his face contorted in agony, his every breath shallow. He was lying on the once-white sheets with no one attending to him.

The nurse was positioning Deryn to remove the bullet from her abdomen. Suddenly wide awake, Deryn swatted her hand away, gritting her teeth at the fresh wave of pain the sudden movement dealt her. "Get your barking hands off me! Help _him!_" She pointed with her good arm at Alek.

"Please stop moving," the nurse ordered. "He'll be dealt with once we've done what we can for our own."

"No! He'll be dealt with _now!_" She felt hot tears rising to the backs of her eyes, whether from blind rage or the pain of her injuries she didn't know or care. Deryn twisted her head to the left and saw a sight that stopped her heart. The groaning had stopped, and his mouth had gone slack. Alek was out cold.

"Alek! Wake up, you sod! WAKE UP!"

"Stop, soldier, _please_. He'll—"

"He can end it! He can end all of it! You have to help him!" In her frenzy she'd forgotten to mind her voice, and it was going all feminine and shrieky on her. "Don't you dare die on me, you insufferable Clanker sod! Don't you _dare_ _barking die! _Do you hear me, _Dummkopf? Saukerl?_ Wake up, you stupid sodding fuck! _GET UP!_"

"Soldier!" the nurse shouted.

"If you die, I swear to god I will _kill_ you!"

In the end, Deryn Sharp had to be sedated.


	8. War Movies pt2

When she came to again, a different, older nurse was replacing her bandages. Deryn started to mumble her protests and ask for the other stupid nurse, but the one working on her pushed the weak hands away and said, "Don't worry, love. Nurse McIntyre already told me. Your secret's safe with us."

Deryn nodded, leaned over the side of her bed, and threw up in the dirt. She winced and wished she hadn't twisted her abdomen like that.

"I don't suppose you'd object to a little more morphine?"

Deryn was given a rag to wipe her mouth off on. "You calling me weak?" she muttered almost incoherently, the obvious, boyish response.

"No, I'm inferring that your punctured leg, shoulder, grazed internal organs and shattered rib are causing you grief." The nurse produced a needle from a tin and pumped liquid into Deryn's arm before she could carry on with her stubborn display of machismo. "By the way, you'll be on a liquid diet for a while." The girl vomited again, but the nurse was quick to catch the thin mess in a bucket. "And that's precisely why."

"Alek…"

"Will probably live."

Deryn looked to her neighbour's bed. Alek looked battered and pale, and more of him was bandaged up in fabricated linens than wasn't, but otherwise he looked more or less alive.

"No thanks to you," the nurse continued.

"What?"

"All that thrashing about you did—you could have severely worsened your condition, young lady!" The nurse caught herself halfway through the appellation, thankfully, and the 'lady' came out nearly inaudibly. Her voice was notably lowered for the remainder of the lecture. "You were lucky this time, but it's pure _idiocy_ to do anything so daft for a boy. Word of advice: don't do it again."

Deryn narrowed her eyes—either that, or the morphine was dragging her lids down. "He's not just a boy."

The nurse sighed. "Suit yourself. Just do the both of you a favour and get some sleep. You need to rest, love."

Deryn willfully complied.

.

She didn't know how much time passed like this. Everything was a blur of bandages, morphine, stupid nurse and older nurse, and soup. Lots of throwing up. Apparently the bullet that hadn't ricocheted off her rib had upset her tummy a wee bit.

Deryn had caught sight of Alek's lacerated side once or twice, and pity, but his handsome face would have a couple of scars as well. Seeing him so injured made her stomach churn again, so she would promptly turn away.

It took a while before the both of them were awake and sober enough to have a proper conversation. And apparently there was quite a conversation to be had.

"Alek."

He obviously wasn't asleep. Just ignoring her.

"_Alek_."

Slowly, he opened his eyes. "Dylan," he murmured in response.

Why was he acting so somberly? All of his men had made it through, more or less intact. Mind you, the only thing keeping _her_ attic relatively unscrambled after that bloodbath was the hopeful fact that Alek was alive. "How're you holding up?"

He composed his expression into some semblance of a smile. "Just peachy, actually. I was thinking of going for a brisk jog after lunch."

She chuckled, then grimaced. Her gut was really not having this. "I think I might go out for the caber toss myself." This was a laughable notion, considering her one arm would be in a sling until her shoulder healed up.

Alek made a pitiful, choked laughing sound, after which the two of them lay in silence and tried to be big boys. Finally Alek spoke again. "I thought I heard a girl screaming at me the day before yesterday, but I haven't decided yet if it was real or not."

Her heart began to thud, working its sluggish way through all the painkillers. "Day before yesterday?"

"When we first got here."

This caught her off guard. Had it really only been two days? Was that a long time to be in a medical tent? She really had no clue how these things worked—how long it took a Swiss cheese girl to heal was not covered in any of her aeronautics manuals.

Alek continued. "I was pretty out of it, mind you, so I could be mistaken. Though the more I think about it, the more real it seems." His expression looked like he wanted to shrug, but didn't have the physical capability to do so. "I thought it might've been one of the nurses."

"Uh huh…" Deryn murmured.

"Possibly an angel."

"No kidding?"

"Except she'd been swearing up a storm, this girl. Like a sailor. Or an airman."

Deryn dared to glance to her left. Alek was looking very pointedly at her.

Blisters.

Words couldn't have made it much clearer than that betrayed look in his eyes.

"I—" She felt like throwing up, but not because of her messed up stomach. It would take her a second to compose herself enough to form words. "I…" And even then, she could do nothing but spit a string of all her most colourful curses. Deep breath. "Alek—" Unheeded, her voice returned to its normal pitch. "Blisters, I _meant_ to tell you."

"I know." It sounded much too tense.

"I tried several times, in fact."

"I'm sure you did."

Listening to him, she could sense that he'd long since burned through all the raw anger, and what she was dealing with now was but a deep-rooted, aching bitterness. She supposed she should've been grateful to have been spared the full force of his ire by a little near-death experience and morphine, but somehow this seemed worse. This would take longer to heal.

Deryn, however—once the room stopped spinning—decided she was not feeling particularly patient.

"And just what do you expect me to do about it? Apologize? Grovel? Beg your princeliness for forgiveness?"

He shot her a dark look. "An apology might be nice, yes."

"Then I'm barking sorry," she growled. "But whatever resentment you feel towards me for keeping this from you long past its due, you'd better deal with _now_, because ignoring me for the rest of your bloody life won't do anyone a squick of good."

"I wasn't going to ignore you," he muttered.

"Well fine. Whatever you were going to do, just get it over with. What's done is done. I was a coward; there's no reason for you to be as well."

He sighed heavily, clearly exhausted. "You know what…?"

"What?"

"I think I need to sleep on it."

"You're going to ignore me."

He narrowed his tired eyes. "I'm going to think long and hard about why I should forgive you."

She grinned dryly. "Want me to write you a list?" But he'd already rolled over onto his good side. She didn't see that stricken look for a while.


	9. War Movies pt3

The very worst part, thought Alek, was how much he _owed _her. He owed her a great deal of respect, of loyalty, and for saving his hide several times and defying direct orders to protect his own secrets. Above all he owed her his friendship, because she had been nothing but decent to him.

That didn't mean it didn't sting.

It didn't mean his pride wasn't hurt. How hadn't he noticed sooner? Surely the archduke of Austria-Este should be able to recognize a mere _woman_ when he sees—and makes physical contact with—one.

And it didn't mean his head wasn't spinning from the sheer absurdity and anomalousness of it all. When it initially occurred to him just who he'd befriended, he felt the same sort of impact he'd suffered when Dr. Barlow revealed her true identity, only a thousand times stronger. Everything he'd known had been tossed upside down on its head.

Women were not supposed to be _strong_ and _courageous_ like Dylan—or whatever her name was; he'd forgotten to ask. They certainly weren't supposed to be able to _fight_. And the fact that she exceeded him in height only irked him more. She was an abomination in every conceivable aspect.

But… similar things had been said about his father, and doubtlessly would be said about himself. He simply could not resent her for stepping out of the mold without being the biggest hypocrite alive. Heck, the more he mulled over it all, the less he _wanted_ to resent her.

And Alek found, after an evening with himself and his thoughts, that he didn't even have it in himself to be angry with her. He was, to put it lightly, in deep clart.

.

"Dylan, are you awake?"

"Mm. No."

"I just… I need you to know that I forgive you."

He thought he saw the glimmer of a blue eye in the dark. "Brilliant. I appreciate it."

"I apologize; I was completely out of line. I was being stupid."

"S'alright. Just don't… think of me any differently, aye? I'm still me." She chuckled sleepily. "Don't go run a mile."

"What was that?"

"What was what?"

"What did you say just now? I didn't catch it."

"Sorry, Alek, my head's gone all fuzzy. Painkillers an' all that. Good night."

.

"My name's Deryn, just… by the way."

"Hm?" This time Alek had been nearly asleep.

"Deryn Sharp." She stroked Bovril's head nervously—someone had found the poor shaken-up beastie in the wreckage and brought it to the tent. It'd promptly taken up residence with Deryn, where it would tremble for a few straight days. "That's… my name."

"Okay," Alek murmured. "Deryn."

She smiled. There had to be a reason that sounded so right.

.

"About the 'run a mile' thing…"

"What about it?"

"You don't actually…" He was unsure of how to word it. Deryn studied his face expectantly. Bovril's saucer-like eyes, deadly focused on him, were not helping.

"No, I don't," she said, grinning, though her stomach was sinking with the sickening notion that she knew what he meant to say. Had she actually mentioned that? Barking drugs. "What don't I actually?"

"Have feelings for me?" he spat out.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"I… well…" She couldn't bring herself to lie to him again after all the mess her first fib had caused. She almost didn't _want_ to lie about this. "Maybe not _feelings_ so much as… inklings. You are a bonnie lad an' all. Good heart an' all that."

The only sounds for a few moments were the laboured breathing and rough voices of those in the tent. There was usually enough going on that no one overheard their hushed conversations, and for that Deryn was grateful.

"Deryn…"

"Aye?"

"I do love you." He managed to look her in the eye when he said this. "You're my best friend," a nervous chuckle, "as odd as that is."

Deryn nodded mechanically, head reeling, having just had her foolish heart pumped full of hydrogen and shot back down to the ground in an instant. "Aye, I love you too. As a friend," she murmured. What a lie. What a lie and it _hurt_ oh god it hurt. How could she have let herself be so _stupid?_

A barking lie, and he knew it. She could see that much written all over his face.

Those had not been the cries of a mere friend. One friend did not scream at another to _wake up_ like that. But he would pretend to believe it, if only to save them both.

Alek forced himself to smile. "That's good. I'm glad."

.

They were to be transferred to a nearby municipal hospital for a few days or weeks, after which they would be discharged. Nurse Fisher delivered this news with their breakfast, but it was so much more than mere news. It was an ultimatum. And eventually, after eating in silence, it was Alek who voiced what they both were thinking.

"I was just wondering…"

"Shoot," Deryn prompted.

"Where are you going to go after this?"

She acknowledged the question but didn't answer right away. It'd been easy to forget she had anywhere to be, lazing about in this tent and being told simply to rest. But the answer seemed pretty obvious to her now, as if there'd never been any other choice.

"Wherever you go," she said softly.

He laughed once, quietly, humourlessly, whether in disbelief or in response to a massive stupidity that had not been as obvious to her as it evidently was to him, she didn't know. Either way, it stung. "I don't know if that's the best idea."

"Well I can't very well go home to my mum and my aunts looking like _this_." She gestured angrily to her battered body.

"Deryn, I'll probably be going back to Austria. Hopefully to put an end to all this. I just—" He ran his fingers through his knotted, greasy hair, completely out of his element. "I don't see—"

"I won't get in your way! I'm not some bumbling, obnoxious _Dummkopf_. Besides," she smiled wryly, "I needn't worry about looking like I'm up to treachery or any of that. There's no way I'm getting back into the service after this."

Alek's brows furrowed. "Why not? The nurses haven't told anyone else. And I don't think anyone's noticed." Not that there was anything _to_ notice, what with the completely unnecessary binding over her chest that Nurse McIntyre had supplied her with.

"Aye, but they're not going to let me back in after getting shot four times without written consent from a physician. And physicians tend to pick up on things like _gender_."

She didn't want to have to say it, but it was fairly obvious, even to Alek, what she was implying. _I have nothing else left_.

Alek sighed and leaned heavily back on his pillow. After a long moment he repeated, "Wherever I go…?"

"Aye."

He turned tiredly to her, but thankfully, wonderfully, he had a small smile on his face. "I suppose I don't have much say in the matter, do I?"

Her lip twitched. "Well, I suppose if you _really_ never wanted to see me again—"

"I do. Trust me, I do."

She smiled, tired eyes lit up, cheeks ever so slightly pink. Alek felt his own face grow warm just looking at her. He realized with dismay that he would've done anything for that smile. He realized that there'd never been any other choice.

"I suppose I could find a way to put you up in a hotel for a bit, at least until you've fully healed."

"Aye. And where'll you go?"

"I might have to join you temporarily, as it happens. The estate might be… infested. Pests and all that."

"Well, if you must."

"We'll have to work on your German."

"What are you talking about? My German is _wunderbar._"

He laughed softly. "It won't be a very forgiving place for an ex-Darwinist-airman—woman—whatever. You might be cooped up for a while."

"And you?"

"Possibly also cooped up."

"Then I do believe I'll be fine."

He grinned at her and held out his hand, to shake, she thought. She was able to reach it with her good left arm, having earlier asked one of the nurses to surreptitiously bump their cots a wee bit closer. Alek took her hand and said, "It's a deal, then," and, after checking quickly to ensure no one was looking, he raised her hand to his lips and planted the first of many kisses on her.


	10. Battle Scars

**You'd think I'd have expended all my mushiness during Dalek week. NOT so!**

* * *

><p>Alek looks appalled. "He told you you could <em>fly<em> with them?"

"Aye."

"With butcher paper and twigs."

"Aye, Alek!"

Alek shakes his head, certain she must be having a go at him this time for sure. "And you _believed_ him?"

Deryn laughs at his unrelenting incredulousness. "Of course! He's my brother! I was five!" She laughs fondly at the memory and absentmindedly strokes the physical reminder of it that's been etched into her skin. "They really did look like real wings. He did a fine job."

Alek forgets himself and touches the scar Deryn's long ago fall from the roof left on her arm. "Well, I certainly hope your father gave him a stern talking to."

She snorts at this. "Aye, our folks had a few things to say to him. And the cast they put on me made a good club." She smirks. "Walloped him right on his attic when Ma had her back turned. He didn't spout so much yackum after that."

The boy chuckles. "Tell me another one."

"Alright. See this one?" Deryn cranes her neck to display a thin ribbon of paler flesh that runs the underside of her chin. "Got that one from sliding on my belly on ice the winter of '09. Nicked it with the zip on my coat."

"What on earth were you doing sliding on ice?"

She looks at him like this should be obvious. "Pretending I was a penguinesque. All of Jaspert's friends were at it, an' the lads from school. It's good fun when you don't mess yourself up."

"Is your brother responsible for all of your childhood injuries?"

"Not this one." Without thinking, Deryn pivots on the bed and lifts the back of her oxford so Alek can see the carving on her lower back. He's instantly flustered at the sudden exposure of a lady's skin, but with her face turned away from him Deryn can't tell. "Fell out of a tree and cut myself on a branch—nasty little blighter. Ma forbid me from climbing any more trees after that, but—" she turns and flashes him an impish grin, "I did anyway."

"No more falls, I hope," Alek manages to say.

"Oh of course not." She waves her hand dismissively. "I never fall."

Deryn re-tucks her shirt with the self-satisfied look she often wears, and which Alek loves simply because it belongs on her fine features. She's certainly earned the right to it, having made it this far with so many little victories along the way, and the fact that such unreserved smugness on a woman's face is so alarming it's refreshing does not escape him either.

"That's unfortunate," he finds himself saying, "because when next you injure yourself I would gladly kiss it better." The words are out before he can catch himself—where did such a thought even _come _from?—but she seems not to mind.

On the contrary… "Is that so?" She cocks an eyebrow, apparently intrigued.

"Certainly."

She grins wickedly. "I did bite my tongue this morning, come to think of it."

He turns bright red—she can see it this time, even in the dim light of her cabin—but says with as much suaveness as he can muster, "Then I shall have to remedy it, won't I?"

"Aye, doctor," she says with a snort, and leans in for the kiss. In no time the two are wrapped up in each other, breathing the same hot air with hungry breaths, fingers clasped tight around locks of hair and handfuls of clothing, so that every tangible bit of the other possible is ensnared in small cages. Deryn wants with the same unrelenting fire she always wants with, but she has one last watch shift to attend to still this evening. Reluctantly she withdraws her tongue and attempts to pick up their conversation where they left off.

"And where might your scars be?" she murmurs against his lips. She kisses his jaw while he answers.

"There are none that can be seen, I'm afraid."

"Mm?"

"Yes. They're all… under the skin."

Hands still knotted in his rusty curls, Deryn draws back to look at him. "Well, how in blazes am I supposed to treat those?"

He smiles shakily and removes her hands from his hair, keeping his hold on them. "In a way, you already have."


	11. LoveHate

_**Goliath**_** spoilers! I'm shipping "Malogers" now, because it has just occurred to me and I'm enjoying the thought. FAH if it doesn't work!**

* * *

><p>Miss Adela Rogers expertly juggled the fresh cup of coffee and banana nut muffin she'd just purchased with an armful of research material, and her ever-present notebook and pencil, scanning the crowded café patio for an empty table to commandeer. When her eyes spotted none, she concluded that the next best thing would be to seat herself with an acquaintance—of which she had many—and keep the table when they left.<p>

Suffice it to say she was not pleased when no prospects fit the criteria, save for one Mr. Eddie Malone and his stupid bullfrog.

Miss Rogers sighed and decided she might as well make the best of the situation. The odds that she and her archenemy would find themselves in the same café in New York at the same time were extraordinarily slim, so surely this had happened for a reason! Without further adieu she slid lithely into the chair across from the other reporter, startling him out of whatever reverie he was caught up on. When he realized who had interrupted his thoughts he quickly hid his notes under the table.

"How did you do it?" Miss Rogers asked, setting down her things.

"Morning to you too, Rogers. Do what?"

She narrowed her eyes. "Weasel all those secrets out of the prince—I'm sorry, the _Archduke_—of Austria-Este. You can't tell me a slime like you actually managed to earn the young man's _trust_."

Ignoring the insult and realizing he had the upper hand here, Malone broke into a smile and scratched the underside of his bullfrog's chin. "And you expect me to just _tell_ you my top-secret strategy?"

"I highly doubt it was that complex. So? What bull did you feed the boy?"

"That, Miss Rogers—" Malone leaned back on the back legs of his chair, "is information you will have to pay for."

"Or was it the bell captain's trust you earned?" She was unconsciously scribbling her musings down as they came out. "I knew he was in the loop."

"I'm sorry, the bell captain?"

"The boy Sharp. You cracked him, didn't you, Malone?"

After a moment's pause Malone broke into laughter. "Oh, _Sharp!_ I'll give you that—the kid was in on a lot of secrets."

"So you had some sort of agreement with him?"

"I suppose you could—hey, hold up now, Rogers! I said you had to pay for that intel!"

Miss Rogers paused in her writing, "No, that's quite alright. Go on," and resumed.

Her scribbling was cut off by a hand of questionable cleanliness planting itself on her page. She glanced up to shoot Malone a look as he slid the notebook out of her hands.

"Now, Miss Rogers, I'm not asking much for payment."

She pressed her lips into a thin line. "What do you want?"

"Well, I must say it's refreshing to see a lady of such intrepidity in the biz. And one so easy on the eyes too."

"The point, please."

Malone smiled. "Do this slime the honour of escorting you to dinner, would you?"

Her glower lasted only another moment before she burst into laughter. "Jeez, Malone, you're pretty ballsy yourself!" She chuckled a bit more, then snatched her notebook back while he was distracted. "Fine. You may pick me up at six o' clock. I trust you won't waste my time."

"Of course not." Malone gathered his belongings and stood—poor manners with the lady still seated, but she'd made it clear she had no intention of leaving the table. When he was sure he had everything he began to pick his way through the crowded patio. "I'll see you, Rogers!"

"I mean it!" she called after him.

Malone waved. "Don't worry, you won't be disappointed!"


	12. I wrote this in class cos I'm a BAMF

**I made this for you. c:**

**chars © Ckott**

* * *

><p>"Dylan, can I talk to you for a moment?"<p>

"Sure, Alek. What's eatin' you?"

"Oh, it's not me. It's… a friend. Of mine."

"Oh, a _friend_?"

"Yes. You see, my friend has a bit of a problem, and I was hoping you could share your thoughts on it."

"He's on the ship?"

"Yes, he's on the ship. See, he's experiencing… _inner stirrings._"

"… Inner stirrings."

"Correct."

"Your _friend_ is experiencing inner stirrings… Okay, aye, go on."

"Yes, well, he thinks he might be in love."

"In _love_?"

"Not so loud! But yes."

"But the only lass on this ship is the lady boffin! And she's married _and_ insufferable!"

"Dylan, lower your voice!"

"Aye, sorry. But—"

"Just listen. That's the problem, you see. It's not a _lady_ he has feelings for."

"Oh… _OH_."

"Exactly. My friend's very confused."

"Aye, your _friend_."

"Why do you keep saying it like that?"

"Like what?"

"Like it's in italics."

"It's the Glaswegian accent. So do you know who he has these stirrings _for_?"

"Well yes, but I'm not sure if I should tell you."

"You can tell me anything, Alek."

"Maybe not this…"

"Oh, so _now_ you're good at keeping your haggis-hole shut."

"Pardon? I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. You were mumbling."

"It's nothing."

"Okay, well, I guess maybe if you knew, things could get resolved a little sooner…"

"Aye."

"You see, he has stirrings… well, he has feeling for _you_, Mr. Sharp. He figures."

"Huh."

"He could be wrong. Well, then again maybe not, since we're having this conversation."

"So these are strong feelings?"

"Yes, I suppose you could say so."

"Well… in that case, I have something to tell you too, Alek."

"Oh? Okay, I'm listening."

"I… I have feelings for you too."

"Oh."

"Wait, why are you looking at me like that?"

"This creates quite a conundrum. What will I tell Mr. Newkirk?"

"What does Newkirk have to do with this?"

"Our _friend_, Mr. Newkirk? I've been talking about him this entire time."

"What? You mean when you said _friend_ you actually meant a barking _friend?_"

"Well of course. Does that mean something different in English? I suppose I could've gotten it confused with something else—I've never had an excuse to practice the word, you see."

"Well that's depressing."

"I generally am. So what do we do about this?"

"You can tell Newkirk he's not my type. I'll be uh… drawing women. With their ankles showing."

"God's wounds, Mr. Sharp! I'm sorry I ever doubted your masculinity!"

"Well, you sodding should be. I'll see you round then."

"Yes! Good jest, pretending you had inner stirrings for me."

"Yeah, it was barking hilarious."

* * *

><p><strong>Happy Thursday, y'all!<strong>

**Cmdr, still working on your request! Sorry it's taking so long! School and work are surprisingly time consuming.**


	13. I don't really have a title for this

**When I have time to do homework, I write fanfiction, and when I have time to write fanfiction, I draw, and when I have time to draw, I feel like I'm wasting my time. Or I go on tumblr and look at gifs of British boy bands. But mostly I work! D:**

**Goliath spoilers ahead~**

**chars © Scotty boy**

* * *

><p>Volger approached the cabin door and withheld the exasperated sigh that would be unbecoming of a man of his standing. Forget that it was late in the evening and no one was around to hear him; it simply wouldn't do for <em>him<em> to make a fuss over _this_. It wasn't something he had any particular inclination to do, but alas, it was something he must. It was for the boy, really.

The wildcount rapped on the door twice. He heard a bit of shuffling and supposed he'd caught the midshipman somewhere between disguises. He waited a moment while she made herself decent, cursing quietly the entire time (how unladylike; he would have to do something about that), until he heard, "Come in. It's not locked."

Volger opened the door slowly and stood hesitantly at the threshold. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Miss—pardon me—_Mr._ Sharp. Did I wake you?"

She was sitting up in bed with her nightshirt on and that _thing _on her knee under the covers, thank heavens, and looking at him like he was a fab from another planet. Clearly she hadn't expected it to be him at the door this late. "Oh… Er, no. Can I help you with anything? Count?"

"Oh, no, no. I was just checking in on you." He cleared his throat, trying to sound less rehearsed. "Was there anything you needed before you turn in? A glass of water, perhaps? Tea?"

He didn't miss the twitch of her lip or the completely bewildered tilt of her eyebrows, even in the dim lighting. "I think I'll be fine, thank you… I appreciate the concern though; that's very… considerate of you."

"Yes, well," he clasped his hands and mustered up a smile, "I suppose you and I shall be seeing quite a lot of each other." Try as he might, the irritation he felt did not leave his voice untainted. Deryn had heard about the row he'd had with Alek, but really, what could the man do about it now unless he fancied popping in a rebreather and going for a dive in the Hudson?

Evidently, try and make friends with his future-sort-of-daughter-in-law.

She didn't have to make quite the same effort to smile back, with that thought at the front of her mind. "Aye. Thanks again."

He nodded curtly. "Goodnight, Miss Sharp. Sleep well."

"And yourself."

And with that he left and shut the door softly behind him.

Deryn waited several heartbeats before sinking back into her pillows. "Okay, you can come out now," she whispered.

A pair of legs popped out from under her bunk, followed by an arm and a torso and a head with the dark curls all disheveled. "That was certainly unexpected," Alek said as he got up.

"Glass of water, my bum," Deryn added, scooching over in the bed to make room for her stowaway. "He must've noticed your empty cabin."

Alek got in under the covers beside her and muttered, "_Blast._ I thought the cushions and loris under the covers would take care of that."

"Do you think he'll be back?"

"Probably not. I doubt he wants to walk in on us anymore than we want him to."

"Brilliant then." Leaning toward him Deryn slipped one hand around his waist and entangled another in his hair, bringing him closer. She flashed a wicked grin and whispered right up against his lips, "Now, where were we?"


	14. a ridiculous notion

**Cleaning out my computer and I've realized I have a lottt of suuper old, sup-par unpublished drabbles, so I figured I'd post them instead of just deleting the files forever. This one's kind of cracky:**

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><p>"Alek, I…"<p>

He waits patiently, his green gaze unintentionally piercing.

"Blisters, this is hard…"

She turns away, suffocating, scared to death. And if there's anything Deryn Sharp will not stand for, it's fear.

"I'm…"

Deep breath.

"Well…"

Force the shaking from her hands.

"I'm a girl."

He blinks, she waits.

He smiles, she's puzzled.

"I know."

Now she's really barking puzzled.

"I beg you're pardon?" That sounds much too polite to her ringing ears. "You barking _knew?_ You sodding _KNEW_ and you let me go on this long thinking I was carrying this _sodding awful burden_? Thinking that I was going to blow everything, betray you like a barking bible ninny and be forever shunned by his dead posh princeliness?"

He frowns. "I thought I was doing you a favour. I felt so _foolish _when Dr. Barlow found out my true identity, and I didn't put half the effort into it that you have; I wanted to keep you from feeling the same humiliation." He shakes his head, smiling humourlessly. "I didn't think you'd be so offended."

"You knew," she says again. She laughs. "You _knew_." Her grin is mirthless.

So, with her own personal brand of swagger and swiftness, she raises a hand and smacks him across the face with a resounding _crack!_

Then she leans in, _very closely, _and presses her lips tenderly to his smarting cheek.

When he's good and stunned, she brushes them down to his gaping mouth. She kisses him there, grinning for real now. It's gentle and wet and oh my. Just about makes up for that bitch slap.

"You're a _dummkopf_," she mutters against his lips.

Somehow he's still able to form sentences. "I was trying to be a gentleman. It was your secret to dispel when you were good and ready."

Something else occurs to her. "You touched me a whole lot."

He smirks a very unprincely smirk. It makes her insides quiver. "Got away with it, didn't I?"

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><p><strong>HA HA Alek would never.<strong>


	15. a second helping of malogers

"It's kind of odd, the way it worked out for them."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, two supposed enemies, falling so madly in love? You only ever hear about that in stories and plays."

Malone looked very pointedly at Adela, on whom the morning light cast a very flattering glow and who was sitting with her usual rigid posture in his bed beside him, drinking the coffee from his kitchen out of a mug his mother had bought him, exuding her usual professionalism despite her scandalous state of dishabille. He was doing the same.

"You're right," he said, reclining back into his pillows. "That would be ridiculous."


	16. gratuitous fanservice!

**bahaha i can't believe I wrote this. (still cleaning out comp of 2 year old fics) Continuation of the... third? chapter? of juila456's "Goggles" (i'd put the link but u kno how this godawful website works)**

**hope you don't mind Julia ;)**

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><p>Day 2<p>

Just as she had the day prior, Deryn Sharp slid herself lithely through the window, giving Alek little more than a heartbeat to jump out of the way. A gust of frigid air came in with her. Alek shivered violently, having become comfortable with the steamy air from his bath.

"God's wounds, you must be freezing," he murmured as she shut the window behind her. Indeed her extremities were bright red and there was snow in her wind-whipped hair.

A dark smirk lifted her reddened cheeks. "Then warm me up."

Before Alek could even blink Deryn had closed the distance between them—every last millimeter of it—and rammed him against the sink. She shoved her icy hands up his shirt and made him yelp, though the sound was muffled. She had her mouth pressed so hungrily to his that he'd bent back under her feverish intensity and now had the sink tap tucked between his shoulder blades.

Alek blinked, uncomprehending. When at last he was able to make sense of how he'd ended up snapped backward at a ninety degree angle, he pushed back enough so that his spine wasn't arched so severely.

Deryn gasping for breath was what allowed his brain to start functioning again. With the shock worn off a bit he was able to better equate her enthusiasm, though he had to admit her cold hands were a bit of an irritation. In a restless mix of annoyance and arousal he planted his own hands firmly on her backside and ground her roughly against himself. The guttural moan she let out surprised him so much he almost let go.  
>She broke off, but never let her mouth get more than an inch from his skin. Her lips brushed against his ear as she spoke, running her hands languorously up and down his torso. "Your room," she murmured.<p>

He swallowed audibly and let her lead him out into the hall.

Day 3

Deryn came in with much less ado the following day, slinking in with catlike grace. It even reminded Alek of a feline the way she approached him—much less violently than last night.

"Evening, love," she greeted him.

"Do you sleep at all?" he asked with a chuckle. He knew her presence was cutting severely into his own resting time, and that was without him having to make any trip back home. The girl couldn't be getting more than five hours a night.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead." Her hands headed for his waist and he flinched, but she'd only meant to take his own hands. She looked down at them as she ran her fingers over his knuckles. "And as long as I'm breathing and you're here, which I admit I still have trouble comprehending," she glanced up to meet his gaze with sincerity that knocked the breath out of him, "I'll spend my time… indulging." She smirked.

A pang of guilt seized him. Alek was always on the winning end of their late night encounters, going to bed satisfied and humming with pleasure while Deryn went home having been only kissed and caressed a little. But he could think of nothing else to do to her, with her, whatever, without putting their souls on the line. It was clear what she desired from him, but all he could do was hope that her ache was not as bad as his.

Alek leaned up to kiss her, and tried to put all his apology and love into it. It was slow, sweet, and he felt her sigh and melt into him. He gently freed a hand to touch her cheek, brush his fingers over her nape and bury them in her hair.

"_Ich liebe dich_," he said when he drew back from her. "That's why I'm here. I'm sorry I can't show you that any better than this."

She smiled and wrapped her arms around him. "Well, eventually we'll get married. Then things'll get a whole lot simpler, I reckon."

Day 4

_ Though if I'd taken a cab, I might've caught you in the bath, aye?_

When she'd first said it, the thought had more or less terrified him. But now he'd deliberately shoved back his bath time (when trying to pay for a cab didn't work) so that when she appeared—

_Plink!_

Alek leaned out of the tub and cracked open the window, allowing Deryn into the room. He sunk lower in the bubbles to escape the chilly night air.

She looked startled when she saw him lounging there but was quick to shut the window. Her surprised expression bloomed into a—what would she call it?—clart-snarfling grin as she shucked her winter coat.

"Blimey," she murmured. It was nothing she hadn't seen before and he was mostly submerged beneath an opaque layer of suds, but she was blushing nonetheless.

"I ran us a bath," Alek said with a gesture. "You must be cold. Why don't you warm up?" His words were obviously rehearsed, but there'd really been no other options. Suavity did not come naturally to him.

Deryn chuckled at the mock formalities. "The door's locked?"

"Of course."

She removed her shirt with her usual brusqueness—one of the deeply-imbedded mannerisms of her pretense—followed by the bindings on her chest. Alek bit the inside of his cheek at the exposure. It was nothing _he'd_ never seen before, but he doubted he'd ever get over the sight of her femininity. When Deryn Sharp stripped she shed an entire gender, not merely an outfit. It was thrilling and overwhelming all at once.

Full-on nudity would be new to him, however, though he'd tried not to dwell too much on the thought lest he lose his nerve. Deryn hardly paused as she untied her boots and undid her belt. Before he knew it she'd hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her trousers and slid them and her pants down her gorgeous long legs, leaving herself as naked as a beast.

Alek tried to steady his poor heart, but it seemed a moot point. What Deryn lacked in bust she made up for in a lower body tight and curved with muscles from climbing the ratlines back on the _Leviathan_, which something programmed deep within him seemed to find unbelievably attractive.

As she eased herself into the tub across from him he worried if this might be the worst possible idea ever. He'd thought he'd be able to control himself by now, but he was very obviously aroused. And to make matters worse, she must've caught him looking at her pert bum as she slid in because she was smirking devilishly at him and had it written all over her face.

He wanted to hang on to the image of her naked body infinitely, but considering the consequences such thoughts were bound to produce, that was probably a bad idea as well.

Deryn sank into the steaming water up to her lips, closing her eyes in contentment and moaning happily. "This is barking nice," she sighed.

Alek smiled, trying to ignore how their bare legs brushed. "I'm glad I could do something nice for _you_ for a change."

She popped one blue eye open. "Hm?"

"Ah, well, you know…"

"Aye, right. That." She removed a hand from the water to brush the hair out of her face. "You make it sound like I don't enjoy it at all."

Alek felt his face redden. "Do you?"

Deryn shrugged nonchalantly. He was certain she was lying—he couldn't imagine being made to perform such ministrations himself; he felt like gagging just thinking about it—which only worsened his guilt at the one-sidedness of their physical relationship.

"Makes you feel better, aye? Plus," she bit her lip and lowered her voice, "I like the way you say my name."

Perhaps she'd been mistaken to divulge that little bit of information. Looking at him now it looked like he was about to bust a trinket. Poor daft boy.

Deryn realized her maddeningly long legs were in all of his personal space and casually retracted them, pulling them up to her chest. Maybe a little space would help him cool off.

They sat there soaking for another few minutes before saying anything. He seemed to have calmed his breathing, which was a plus. It was almost comical, how glaringly apparent his arousal was, especially compared to hers. He must've thought she was so restrained, but the simple truth was just that her desire didn't show.

For example, at the moment the simple stimulation of being naked in a tub with him and seeing him hot and bothered and covered in soap had her insides gyrating and tingling like a brewing storm. Her heart was thundering away and she could feel her pulse between her legs. But he couldn't see any of it, and she was such a practiced liar that her face betrayed nothing.

"How's work?" she asked nonchalantly.

He laughed at that. "Still a bit dull, at the moment. This is the best part of my day. And yourself?"

"Brilliant. Barlow's got me familiarizing myself with the more dangerous beasties now." She leaned forward conspirationally and grinned madly. "Today I stuck my head in a tigeresque's mouth."

"Deryn!" he gasped, then remembered to keep quiet. "That's so dangerous!"

"Dead _exciting_, actually!" She laughed. "But this is still the most exciting part of my day."

Alek smiled sheepishly and chuckled, after which they let silence descend again. It was much less tense this time. After a moment he said, "Turn around and come here."

"What for?"

"I'm going to give you a backrub."

"There's nothing wrong with my back," Deryn murmured, though did as she was told. She tucked herself between Alek's legs, though kept enough of a gap between them to keep from rubbing against him in any way.

"It still feels nice," Alek insisted. "And it's the least I can do."

She mumbled some sort of consent that turned into a sigh as his hands rubbed slowly up and down her neck. _Blisters_, he was right. Fingers roughened from work on the engines kneaded her soapy skin, working through knots that must've appeared somewhere between heavy lifting and forcefully brushing the coats of the zoo's many inhabitants. His hands were strong on her shoulders, down her back, leeching all the tension out of her and turning her to putty in his lap. She was practically purring.

"Oh, love," she breathed as he massaged a particularly sensitive spot. She moaned and let her head droop back. "Yes, love, that's it…"

He swallowed audibly and added more pressure. Somewhere along a string of happy sighs she murmured, "Oh, Alek…" abruptly followed by him tensing and cursing under his breath.

"What's wrong?" Deryn twisted around to ask, but in doing so answered her own question. The movement caused her lower back to bump against the stiffened indication that this had gone too far. Alek flushed bright red and groaned quietly.

"I'm sorry—"

"Blisters, Alek, don't be." With only a bit of difficulty she managed to rotate herself so that she could face him. She cupped his face and kissed him, then let her hands drop down his front to his waist. "Let me take care of that for you."

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><p><strong>Aand that's as far as that got.<strong>


	17. indecent glaswegians

**I CAN believe I wrote this haha it isn't finished though, so better not read if you don't like drabbles that cut off abruptly…**

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><p>Deryn pedaled at breakneck speed down the gravel road, laughing ecstatically as Alek tightened his death grip around her. Open pasture and fields passed as a silver blur in her periphery like the sea under the <em>Leviathan's<em> belly. The wind mussed her hair in a way she'd come to associate with the purest form of joy, and Alek's warmth against her back was no bother either.

"Why are we going so fast?" Alek asked frantically.

"I miss flying!" she shouted back at him.

"You were flying last week!"

Ignoring him, she let out a wild whoop as they careened down another hill. For a second she worried that Alek would slip off the back of her bike, but she'd ridden out this way countless times with her brother, always without injury. He'd be fine.

"Almost there, love."

"_Gott sei Dank_."

Smiling, she took the bike down a narrow side road, slowing down and bringing them to a copse of trees that must have seen centuries of secret lovers stealing away in the dead of night. Lightning bugs flitted about, reminding Deryn of the paper lanterns in Japan.

They left the bike on the road and walked hand in hand under threadbare moonlight, picking their way around outstretched branches that glowed like worms. Alek ran his fingers over the trunk of an old oak that was decorated with hearts and carved initials in eternal pairs. For a second he wondered if they would ever represent themselves on that ancient testimony, and decided to bring a knife with him next time.

Good grief, next time. He didn't even know what he was doing out here _this_ time.

Past the oak, a flawless replica of the midnight sky was captured in water and cradled in bulrushes and cattails. An old tire hung over the creek, and Alek could hear frogs singing in the grasses.

"Me and Jaspert used to come here as kids," Deryn was saying. "Then we grew up and he started bringing his lass out instead. That's them." She pointed to one of the numerous carvings.

"So this is where all the indecent Glaswegians go," Alek concluded.

"Aye, that sounds right." She flashed him a smile and headed down to the water's edge. "Shall we go for a dip?"

Alek frowned. "You didn't tell me we were going swimming. I didn't bring a suit."

"Indecent Glaswegians don't need suits," she said simply, unbuttoning her blouse and tossing it aside. She was slower pulling her camisole over her head, giving Alek a bit of a show and glancing knowingly at him as he gawked at her luminous skin. It often startled him to have the careful illusion of her androgyny shattered, as it was with her telltale anatomy exposed to the night air.

He stepped out from the trees as she kicked away her shoes and slid off her trousers and pants. His breathing had become considerably shallower, and before he knew it, she'd split the moon's reflection in a fluid dive.

After a moment Deryn surfaced a couple metres off and shook diamonds from her short hair. Neck and shoulders brushed with silver, she beckoned to him like a nymph in a sailor's song. He didn't need much more convincing than that.

Alek undressed and slipped into the water—not too chilly after the scorching day—and caught sight of her biting her lower lip before he went under.


	18. the key to evolution

**2012 me says: "Inspired by the unit we're currently covering in Bio, and the rather entertaining film we've been watching to accompany it ;) Post-Goliath, at the Zoological Society's HQ. Imagine the tutor sounds like Sean Connery; it is **_**so much better**_**."**

**2014 me is still sniggering haha this is the worst.**

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><p>"One of the things that threw Darwin most for a loop were the vast differences in appearances between males and females of the same species. He couldn't figure out why males would evolve to possess such hindering, ostentatious displays."<p>

"It's to get the lassies, obviously," Deryn said offhandedly. Alek shot her a look. He was actually trying to learn some of this.

"Correct, Mr. Sharp," their (very patient, bless him) tutor said. "But it was a while before Darwin realized that that was the case." The man cleared his throat and turned back to the textbook, not one to let the disguised ex-airwoman (or airman, as far as he knew) derail his lesson. "Indeed, certain characteristics such as a male peacock's feathers, a lion's mane, or perhaps Mr. von Hapsburg's striking good looks," he said with a teasing smile, "or Mr. Sharp's impressive stature, are all evolutionary tools to attract a lady."

Deryn laughed while Alek cast his eyes aside sheepishly. "So what did the prince's ears evolve so barking huge for?"

"Language, boy. And if you've been paying attention, you'd be able to answer that yourself."

"It's a random mutation," Alek answered, proud at first to have one-upped Deryn in a biology lesson before realizing what he'd just said about himself. She laughed some more.

"Correct. And since they most likely won't hinder Mr. von Hapsburg's ability to attract a mate, the gene will what? Mr. Sharp?"

Alek elbowed her in the ribs. "Quit laughing and answer!"

"Get passed on to his adorable little Clanker offspring," she said. When Mr. Woods nodded and turned back to his textbook, she shot Alek an implicative look and mouthed, "_Our_ offspring." She had to chuckle again when he turned beet red.

"Now, Mr. Sharp, you'll need to be more mature than that if we are to move on. The next chapter concerns how evolution in different living conditions alters the mating habits of separate species, and I won't have any of your gadding about, understand?"

Deryn sobered up. "Aye, sir, I want to hear about the mating."

Alek looked unsettled. "Is that really appropriate?"

"But of course, my boy! It's the _key_ to evolution!"

"Yeah, mate," Deryn teased him. "The _key_!"

"We'll look at asexual reproduction first, and afterwards I have a quick film to illustrate the radical differences in the brutish mating practices of certain chimpanzees, and the frequent love-making of their evolutionary cousins. You boys'll never guess the reason for the difference," Mr. Woods tacked on, as casually thrilled as if he was describing his favourite childhood recipe and not primates doing the nasty.

Alek swallowed as Deryn "accidentally" brushed her leg against his. "Sounds fascinating," she said. "And a film! What a treat, aye, Alek?"

"Mm-hm," he replied, kicking her leg away.

Confident that Mr. Woods was absorbed in his current task rifling through a book cart across the room, and that no one in the library adjacent to their little conference room was paying them any mind, she snuck her hand onto his thigh and gave it a squeeze. He made some sort of startled animal noise that he attempted to cover with a cough.

"Don't sound so enthusiastic," she chided him sarcastically while the tutor was distracted. "You're excited to learn about mating, aren't you?"

"Why are you making this so difficult?" he asked through clenched teeth.

"I already know this stuff like the back of my hand. I'm just trying to keep myself entertained."

Alek glared at her.

"Fine." She turned away from him with a sigh. Still whispering, she added, "Though judging from your behaviour last night, I'd think you'd be pretty keen on learning the what's what on mating."

He looked panicked. "Please, Der—Dylan, I'm begging you. _Behave_!"

"Aha, found it!" Mr. Woods triumphantly held up a textbook heavy enough to stun two elephantines in one blow. "This text contains some marvelous photographs of plant spores on ferns! Quite fascinating, really."

Deryn smiled quite falsely. "Ooh, let me at 'em!"

Alek sank in his chair, thinking that the barking monkey sex film could not come fast enough.


	19. mistakes

**I can see why I didn't publish all of these now haha there's a RECURRING theme that makes 2012 me look like I had nothing but the frick-frack on the brain.**

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><p>It was, at the very worst, a slip-up when he kissed her goodnight on the cheek.<p>

It was a mistake when he kissed her on the mouth (well, he'd been getting to it, but she'd impatiently grabbed his face and mashed his lips to hers herself).

It was a little inappropriate when he'd come back for more, gripping her shoulders while she shoved her hands in his jacket.

It was much more inappropriate when he knotted his fingers up in her boyish hair, holding her closer.

It was downright scandalous when he slid his hands up her shirt (but delicious when she'd sighed and reciprocated the gesture).

It was horribly unbecoming when he let her toss the offending garments aside, let her press her bare chest to his, let her grab his hands and place them around her telltale anatomy, just over her frenzied heart.

It was abhorrent when, in an alien fit of terrifying passion, he pinned her down and buried them both in a mess of skin and sheets.

And now, it was positively_ sinful_ that he'd let her strip down to her flesh, just to prove a point (there is a _girl_ under here), and that he couldn't stop drinking in the sight of her, couldn't stop marveling and touching and squeezing, couldn't stop wanting. _God_, he wanted her.

Absolutely sinful.

Slender hips, sinuous muscle, grace and ferocity like a tigeresque's.

A right mess, really.

Bright eyes, impish grin, swollen lips and flushed, inviting skin, her engines humming like a Stormwalker's.

An impending _disaster_.

Her breathy voice in his ear—that charming inflection—coaxing him through ingrained notions of virtue and propriety to a dark, shadowed place of temptation where she was the only source of light and the air smelled of her skin.

He looks her over. Legs, shoulders, stomach—freckled and fit, all of it, the body of a goddess of war—an expression he has no name for, not in any of his plethora of languages. Like desire disguised as a dare. It makes him feel as though he's sick with some sort of glorious fever.

Damnation? Bring it.

Mistakes? Bring all of them.


End file.
